iConference 2008http://hdl.handle.net/2142/14875
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 22:37:40 GMT2015-08-02T22:37:40ZiConference 2008https://www.ideals.illinois.edu:443/bitstream/id/52934/http://hdl.handle.net/2142/14875
I Schools in the Greater Communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/15440
I Schools in the Greater Community
iSchools; Clinic; instruction; projects; collaboration; laboratory; incubation; university
Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/154402008-02-28T00:00:00ZTraining, Integration, and Identity: A Roundtable Discussion of Undergraduate and Professional Master's Programs in iSchoolshttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/15197
Training, Integration, and Identity: A Roundtable Discussion of Undergraduate and Professional Master's Programs in iSchools
Professional students, whether undergraduates or masters’ students, represent a
significant portion of the iSchool community. How do iSchools effectively educate those
students while continuing to develop successful research programs? This roundtable
discussion will focus on how iSchools educate their professional students and engage
them in the research aspect of their programs. Innovative approaches to training and
integration will be the central theme of this discussion. In an iSchool – where students
train for professions including librarianship, information policy, human-centered
computing, preservation and researchers explore such topics as incentive-centered
design, forensic informatics, computational linguistics, and digital libraries have both
competing and complimentary goals – the potentials for collaboration, innovation,
misunderstanding, and disharmony are all high.
The annual iConference provides a unique opportunity for us, as a community, to
discuss the roles our professional students have in shaping our identity and our
practices. The proposed roundtable will invite participants to discuss questions such as:
• What should the role of research in training information professionals be?
• How can we best engage professional students in our research?
• How do iSchools address the unique curricular challenges we face in preparing
students for a very wide variety of careers?
• What do we want an Information degree to signal in the marketplace?
• What are some successes in which research and professional training have
benefited one another?
ischools; research; education; professional students
Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/151972008-02-28T00:00:00ZSocial Network Analysishttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/15196
Social Network Analysis
The proposed roundtable will bring together researchers from the iSchool community to discuss trends, new questions, and innovative ideas regarding social networks. For instance, how to discover and analyze subcommunities within a very large social network? How new behaviors in on-line social networks emerge through interactions? How social networks hidden within blogs, fora, and other forms of on-line communications can be identified? What are the impacts of social networks on social activities? How do social networks form, evolve, and grow? How ideas are spread over time and space using social networks? The proposed roundtable will stress the interdisciplinary challenges of these and other topics related to social networks.
Through these interactions, we hope the roundtable can help the iSchool community in establishing one or multiple grand challenges regarding social networks and launching an effort to develop a strategy that aims to position iSchools to be leaders in addressing these grand challenges.
social network; community; network analysis
Sun, 28 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/151962010-02-28T00:00:00ZThe Role of iSchools in Medical Informaticshttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/15195
The Role of iSchools in Medical Informatics
Similar to iSchools, healthcare is an interdisciplinary field that encompasses heterogeneous environments (e.g., hospitals, clinics, home) and perspectives. However, medical informatics research focuses mainly on technical solutions to narrow problems. Often, this leads to the design of systems that solve one problem but do not fit the general work practices in a setting. In response, there is a growing movement in the community to start investigating organizational and social issues that impact the design, implementation, and use of information technologies (Reddy and Bradner 2005; Kaplan and Shaw 2004). This trend will only increase as healthcare documentation in the US increasingly moves from paper-based to electronic systems.
iSchools are uniquely positioned to benefit the medical informatics community due to our interdisciplinary foundation. Taking the theoretical paradigms and methods from various fields will allow us to address the interplay between people, healthcare technologies, and healthcare organizations. Some areas could include:
• Design and evaluation mechanisms to account for the ways different stakeholders interact with systems.
• Workflow analysis to understand how information is used for various activities in preparation for a systems implementation.
• Developing and implementing systems that deliver the right information to the right people at the right time.
iSchool research can also help expand the focus of the medical informatics community to examine other important issues such as the digital divide in healthcare and protecting patient privacy. By working together, the iSchools can train the next generation of researchers providing needed interdisciplinary insight into medical informatics issues and extend into new territories. Healthcare is characterized by multiple stakeholders and teams that are separated by time and space that are information-dependent; therefore, iSchool research in this field can also impact research in related areas. Besides being a rich setting for conducting research, healthcare impacts our lives on a daily basis.
The hosts of the roundtable will discuss how iSchools can get involved to incorporate more interdisciplinary research in the medical informatics area. In particular, we will focus on the following questions:
1. What are the interesting medical informatics research problems from an iSchool perspective?
2. How can iSchool research impact the medical informatics field?
3. What are the challenges iSchools face in this field?
health informatics; iSchool
Sun, 28 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/151952010-02-28T00:00:00ZScience and Technology Studies (STS) in iSchoolshttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/15194
Science and Technology Studies (STS) in iSchools
The interests of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and iSchools have converged in recent years. Building upon a successful five-session track on the influence of IS on STS at the recent Social Studies of Science Conference (October, 2007, Montreal), we propose a complementary session at the iConference that reflects on the influence of STS on IS.
STS is an interdisciplinary field that studies technology, the mutual constitution of technology and social, and sociotechnical networks; the practice of science and the development of scientific knowledge (and, by extension, other kinds of knowledge and knowledge communities); and national and international science policy. STS generally takes a strongly constructionist, situated, social, and critical perspective on these topics. Both fields are concerned with the interaction among information and communication technologies (ICTs), knowledge, society, practice, the social, and public policy. And both are highly interdisciplinary: STS’ roots are in history, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology.
STS is increasingly represented in iSchools. Many STS scholars are finding congenial homes on iSchool faculties. Many iSchool faculty and PhD students are doing research drawing on STS concepts and methods. STS courses are being offered in iSchools, and iSchool students are taking STS courses in other departments.
These shared interests are apparent in the world of scholarly publishing and conferences. Many iSchool faculty and PhD students have presented at the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) annual conference in recent years. Some publications have looked at STS and IS, notably Van House’s 2003 ARIST chapter “Science and Technology Studies and Information Studies,” and, most recently, Boczkowski and Lievrouw’s “Bridging STS and Communication Studies: Scholarship on Media and Information Technologies” in the just-published third edition of the Handbook of Science, Technology and Society. Borgman’s new book, Scholarship in the Digital Age, draws heavily on both STS and IS theory and practice. Bowker and Star’s Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences have been highly influential in both fields, and Bowker’s Memory Practices in the Sciences won “best book” awards from both ASIST and 4S, while Star is the immediate past president of 4S.
We are proposing a panel to examine this growing alliance. We will briefly explain to iSchool people who are unfamiliar with STS what it is and why it’s increasingly intertwined with iSchools. We will also propose to the panel a series of questions about the pros and cons of this alliance, and possible future directions for research and teaching. These questions may include:
• In what areas of research and teaching can STS contribute to iSchools’ concerns? And vice versa?
• Where are the ideological/discursive/theoretical overlaps and disjunctions between STS and iSchools?
• What are STS methods how are they usefully included in iSchools? In research? In the curriculum?
• Does STS have a place in the master’s curriculum?
• How does STS help build alliances on campus?
STS; methods; theory; IS
Sun, 28 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/151942010-02-28T00:00:00ZInformation: Transforming the World through Better Communicationshttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/15191
Information: Transforming the World through Better Communications
A central tenet of the iSchools is that “the right information delivered at the right time to the right people in the right form,” will “provide society with the key to success.” (www.ischools.org/oc/study.html) For this goal to be realized, information scholars and professionals must effectively communicate their knowledge to those people who will do something useful with it. The purpose of this roundtable is to increase the communication skills of session attendees in support of both iSchool and iConference 2008 goals. More specifically, this communications roundtable will provide time-tested communications tips to improve participant’s ability to focus their information message, identify key audiences, and improve their presentation, writing, and media skills. The session will also draw on the diverse positive and negative experiences from attendees, sharing their personal experiences in communicating effectively with different audiences and through different formats.
Communications; mentoring; professional development; writing; speaking
Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/151912008-02-28T00:00:00ZBridging the Divide Between Theory and Practice in ICT for Developmenthttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/15190
Bridging the Divide Between Theory and Practice in ICT for Development
Recent years have seen a burgeoning interest in the use of information and communications technologies for development (ICT4D/ICTD). In academia, this has manifested itself as evaluations of Internet kiosks (e.g. e-Choupal, Akshaya, telecentre.org) and other ICTD interventions, as well as projects like One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), Wireless Long Distance Networks (WiLDnet) and MultiMouse, which endeavor to innovate new technologies that address the specific needs and requirements of communities in developing countries. We propose to hold a roundtable discussion, in which PhD students interested in or currently working on questions around information and communications technology in emerging regions can discuss some of the overarching issues entailed in our research topics. In particular, we examine the multi-disciplinary nature of our research, and the role of I School students in understanding where theory and practice meet in ICTD.
Information schools, as a place where social science and technological practice intersect, are well positioned to do this research. Technologists often look at ICTD from an engineering and implementation perspective. Social scientists have a good understanding of the social structures and other factors underlying ICTD deployments. However, communication between the two groups is often limited by a lack of shared vocabulary, and a difference in practice. As I School students, we take an interdisciplinary view on this question, which we hope will result in a more synthesized and well-grounded approach to ICTD interventions.
As with other interdisciplinary endeavors, our challenge is to bridge the divide between theory and practice, understanding how our efforts in understanding ICTs and implementing new ones can contribute to academia. What is the role of social theory and development theory in real-world ICTD deployments? How can existing bodies of knowledge contribute to ICTD practices? Can there be a theoretical basis for practical deployments? We believe that the answer is an affirmative “yes,” but there is no clear and obvious path for us to take in carrying out theory-driven ICTD research projects. For that matter, there are no clear and obvious venues in which we should publish the results of our research.
We have two main goals for this roundtable discussion:
1. Community Building: Identify and share experiences with students from other I Schools also interested in this topic, discussing ways in which we can better support each other across schools.
2. Approach: Discuss the challenges of doing ICTD research, specifically addressing the challenge of linking theory and practice in the work that we do.
ICTD work necessarily ranges across a wide variety of disciplines, encompassing (but not limited to) fields like public health, development policy, business, education, development theory, human-computer interaction, and networked systems. As individuals, we are not able to be experts in all of these areas simultaneously. As a community, however, we will be able to leverage one another’s expertise, building a collective understanding of the work we endeavor to carry out.
ictd ict4d development emerging regions
Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/151902008-02-28T00:00:00ZYoung People and Technologies: Fostering Transformative Experienceshttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/15189
Young People and Technologies: Fostering Transformative Experiences
In "Preparing School Library Media Specialists for the New Century: Results of a Survey" ( Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 42: 3, pp. 220-227, Summer 2001), Carol Tilley and Daniel Callison found that among schools accredited by the American Library Association technology-focused courses ranked highest on the list of the most widely required courses for this professional speciality. The survey also revealed that technology-related courses dominated the roster of elective coursework.
A quick reading of the survey may suggest that these graduate programs in information studies had presciently understood the increasing role that information and communications technologies (ICTs) play in the daily lives of both young people and the information professionals who serve them. Yet, data from the survey also revealed that ICT-related coursework focused on ICTs in service of professionals' needs, not ICTs in service of youth empowerment. Furthermore, the survey's scope did not allow it to address more illuminating questions including the extent to which other youth services information professionals such as public library children's specialists receive training in ICTs, to what degree education related to ICTs is supplanting a focus on traditional media and technologies, or how information schools can prepare professionals to foster transformative experiences for young people through the use of ICTs.
The purpose of this roundtable, then, is to provide a forum for discussing how information schools might more effectively educate youth services information professionals in the theory and application of ICTs to their interactions--structured and unstructured--with young people. Participants will be encouraged to bring relevant course descriptions, class syllabi, assigned readings, and course assignment description to the discussion to provide concrete examples of issues. The conversation will be enriched through references to appropriate models from community and social informatics, media literacy, and traditional librarianship, as well as research and best practices in education. The Pacific Bell/UCLA Initiative for 21st Century Literacies provides an additional corpus of examples, research, and practice on which to draw.
young people; information technology; 21st century literacies; professional education
Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/151892008-02-28T00:00:00ZWhose Turn is It? Research on Gaming in the iSchoolshttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/15188
Whose Turn is It? Research on Gaming in the iSchools
Gaming is a rapidly growing new medium with sales surpassing box office and music revenues. Gaming provides a method of interacting with information in ways that static, non-participatory information containers cannot provide. Libraries are supporting gaming activities and educators are integrating gaming in new ways. Most of the younger generations (and many of the older generations) are drawn to gaming activities for leisure, sometimes by themselves, but more often, through sharing the same physical or virtual space with others. Gaming, once relegated to the back rooms and basements, is now discussed frequently on the news and at the dinner table.
This phenomenon has also caught the attention of iSchool researchers. Some scholars are exploring the information spaces in which gamers live and support their activities. Others explore ways in which gaming can be used to teach traditional skills, while some look at how gaming teaches new types of information literacy not easily teachable in a traditional lecture-style format. Some support the gaming creation process through working with industry or developing ways that youth programs facilitate game creation and shared experiences. As libraries support gaming activities, researchers are exploring this intersection to understand how gaming can be effectively used.
There is also a growing body of research on gaming relevant to iSchool areas such as information and telecommunications management. Academic conferences including AMCIS and HICSS have had mini-tracks on the subject for several years. There have been several calls for papers for journal special issues on related topics, particularly the growth of online multiplayer environments as a new medium of communication. Virtual worlds, which originated as large scale open ended games, have grown in popularity to the point where they are becoming increasingly mainstream. This trend will strengthen as technological advances make these environments increasingly compelling.
The increasing use of gaming technologies requires greater attention from academia. Examples of topics that can be studied include business models, the digital persona, HCI elements, mobile gaming, online addiction, the purpose and value of recreational gaming in libraries, and virtual item property rights. A number of universities have recognized gaming as an area of high industry and student demand. The iSchools are a natural home for this type of activity but we are currently behind traditional fields such as education, performing arts, engineering, and communication in building research, industry funding, and academic programs.
The goal of this roundtable is to attract iSchool researchers who are exploring gaming research projects. This will be a sharing roundtable, with the hope of allowing researchers to make connections between schools and across disciplines. Those looking to get involved in gaming research are also welcome to attend and discover potential partnerships. A goal will be to craft several potential multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional grant proposals in order to allow the iSchools to take their turn at the gaming table.
gaming
Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/151882008-02-28T00:00:00ZBeyond the Qualitative/Quantitative Split: Alternate Forms of Research in the Information Spacehttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/15187
Beyond the Qualitative/Quantitative Split: Alternate Forms of Research in the Information Space
Within information schools, multidisciplinarity has most typically meant the extension of “information science” to include social science, and the use of qualitative as well as quantitative research methods. The ultimate goal of research, as presented, for example, in research methods courses, is generalizable and predictive knowledge. There is also an emphasis on research that has clear practical implications. The University of Washington’s iSchool, for example, concludes its mission statement by declaring that “we make information work,” which implies that information research must go beyond mere understanding of how “information works” and into application, or making it work. Other mission statements also support this implied notion. U.C. Berkeley’s mission statement asserts that the school “pioneers solutions,” and the University of Michigan states that its research is intended to “[unify] human-centered design approaches and sophisticated technologies.”
In contrast, research in the humanities, design, and the arts is more likely to eschew goals of generalizability and predictability, focusing more on exploration, illumination, originality, and innovation. Such fields deemphasize standard methods, relying to a greater degree on the creativity of the researcher. Research in this vein is also less apt to have explicit ties to immediate practical concerns.
In this discussion, we will explore the differing research goals and methods exemplified by the humanities, design, and the arts, and ask how such goals and methods might be incorporated into the information space.
We propose a combination of the traditional panel presentation with a roundtable discussion. The four organizers will introduce the discussion by briefly (five minutes each) describing their dissertation projects and associated methods. All these projects involve both nontraditional methods for information science (drawn from the humanities and/or design research) and the integration of multiple methods. These projects will serve as case studies to ground and propel the discussion. We hope to engage the audience in such questions as the following:
• Can information “science” be further broadened to include the humanities, design, and the arts?
• What opportunities might be afforded by more fully integrating a range of diverse methods into the information space?
• Is there a role, in information schools, for research that is not closely aligned with practical concerns?
• How can information schools support such research in the context of an academic climate that places increasing priority on external funding from grants and corporate sponsorship?
• Do we need to consider establishing some balance between different approaches to research? If so, what guidelines should be used to “monitor” such a balance? Who should be involved in such monitoring—the profession, school administrators, professional associations, peer-reviewed publications, individual researchers?
• If the information space can be broadened, what implications would that hold for future methods classes in information schools?
research; methods; information science
Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/2142/151872008-02-28T00:00:00Z